LA3OS2: a software package for laser guide star adaptive optics systems

In the framework of the European Training and Mobility of Researchers program, a network named 'Laser Guide Star for 8-m Class Telescopes' has been funded. One task of this network consists in developing a numerical simulator devoted to laser guide star adaptive optics systems for astronomy. The principal aim of this simulator is to support investigations about laser guide star problems like cone effect and tip-tilt indetermination. In order to allow all kinds of solutions to these problems, the simulator structure was built as versatile as possible. This software package includes several modules that allow atmospheric perturbations simulation, geometrical wavefront sensing and reconstruction, points-spread function calculation, time filtering, etc. The paper describes the version 1.0 of this simulator called LA3OS2, together with an example of application.

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